As It Appears
by DSieya
Summary: Penny's life changes at a petting zoo. sheldon/penny, oneshot, crack-ish!fic, dedicated to tsukihysteria


**Originally posted at Paradox, the Sheldon/Penny LiveJournal community, for Tsukihysteria, who donated $10 to Haiti relief for 1,000 words. It ended up being 4,000, but, hey.**

**Prompt:** "Sheldon is going to the doctor for a monthly/yearly check up with Penny. Hilarity ensues. OR Sheldon is a werewolf. Funny and sexiness ensues." And then she suggested I combine them. So. Sorry, everyone.

* * *

Penny's life changes at a petting zoo.

Howard drags the six of them there despite the fact that, like, _no_ one wants to go. Bernadette doesn't like small animals. Small animals don't like Leonard. They scare Raj. They're too dirty for Sheldon. They're not large enough for Penny (unless it's like a wolverine, hi-ya!, those things are fierce!).

They are also surrounded by small whining children. Everyone's feelings about the children are roughly similar to their feelings about the small animals.

"Mommy," a little girl complains, tugging on the jacket of the purple velour sweatsuit that her mother is wearing. Penny is sure she's seen that sweatsuit before. When she was working at Macy's. When she was sixteen. It was on the sales rack. "Mommy, make the big lemur pet the puppy!"

Penny tries to ignore this. She glances over at Sheldon who is gritting his jaw and looks slightly revolted by the proximity of the little girl. She doesn't think that Sheldon has a problem with _children_, per se, but children with chocolate smeared across their jaws and lips and fingers probably don't bode well for his sensibilities.

Sensibilities. Ha! Lookit her go. She's starting to sound like Sheldon now.

Penny wishes she could leave, but Howard's in the pen with Bernadette trying to persuade her that goats really _are_ cute, even though the goat is making a spirited attempt at eating Bernadette's shoes, and as both Bernadette and Howard are on the, hm, _smallish_ side Penny can't trust them to not get hurt if these long-suffering animals turn on them. And she sure as hell isn't going to trust that stupid girl popping her gum and digging dirt out of her fingernails, whose only experience probably includes having a dog and, like, taking horseback riding lessons on a lunge line. It probably makes her for some reason think she's qualified to deal with a bunch of stampeding animals (small though they may be). Honestly, it's Penny's _obligation _to stay here.

"Moommmyy-uh," the little girl whines. Oh god. Penny's not so sure about having children anymore. "Mommmmy-uh, make the lemur pet himmm-uh!"

Penny turns to give an annoyed look at the mother, but before she's able to conjure one that actually conveys her irritation, she looks at the little girl.

The little girl is pointing at Sheldon.

Penny about dies of laughter.

Vaguely she registers Sheldon scolding that it's rude to point, and once she manages to pick herself off the fence she takes a hold of Sheldon's elbow.

"That's right, Mr. Lemur Guy! Pet the puppy!" she encourages.

"Pet the puppy!" the little girl echoes. Penny gives her a discreet thumbs-up.

"Small child," Sheldon addresses her, stuffily, "if _anyone_ resembles a lemur here, due to your size—"

"Pet it, Sheldon," Penny says through gritted teeth, before the girl lets out loud and screeching sobs at being called a monkey.

Sheldon gives her a look like he's not quite sure why he's allowing her to tell him to do something, nor why he does it anyway.

He kneels, reaches his hand through the fence, and very gingerly and with much hesitation and evident frustration, he pats a sleeping puppy on the head. The girl's screeches of delight are drowned out by Sheldon's screeches of horror when the puppy wakes up and bites him in response.

Penny collapses against the fence in laughter again when Sheldon collapses onto his ass and starts to shout things about rabies, gangrene, and tetanus, cradling his cut finger as if it were a limb in need of amputation.

What Penny doesn't know is that something a lot more interesting than rabies is coming her way.

* * *

"Penny. Penny. Penny."

It's gotten to the point where Sheldon doesn't even have to get into the second knock of his ridiculous nine-knock compulsion for Penny to know that he's at the door. Most people's knocks are polite, saying, 'Please open the door, there is someone behind it that would like to speak with you.' Sheldon's, from the get-go, says, 'ANSWER YOUR DOOR.'

Penny answers her door.

"Sheldon. What," she groans, rubbing her palm into her eye. Technically it's past eleven in the morning, and she's too tired to muster up any annoyance anyway.

"It's the first of June."

Penny tries to decipher what this means he wants her to do for him, but she's got nada.

"And tomorrow's the second. Good night," she says, trying to close the door on him so she can go back to bed and pull the cover over her face.

He blocks it.

"Penny! I have my bi-yearly medical examination, which could _not_ have come at a better time, might I add, the—"

Penny finally understands. "Make Leonard take you."

"That isn't an option. He's pretending that he's not in his bedroom."

Penny weighs the pros and cons.

She can get an hour's more sleep.

Sheldon will be a whining mess if he misses his appointment.

Penny grabs her keys and slips on her fuzzy slippers, not even bothering with hair or makeup.

He is his usual talkative self on the ride there. But it involves a lot more complaining than usual, and not even about her Check Engine light. It's about how he wasn't able to sleep for fear of the cut on his finger, which hurts, by the way, and look, it's red, it shouldn't be red, and then he opens the window because it's too stuffy in her car, making Penny's hair fly around annoyingly, but he leans his head against the doorframe and seems to enjoy the wind on his face.

When they finally reach the doctor's office (after turning around a few times because Penny got lost but, fuck it, he didn't tell her to _"turn there"_ until she was halfway through the intersection anyway, the asshole.)

They stomp into the waiting room.

"Dr. Cooper! Right on time!" The girl behind the counter grins widely, and a little wildly. Penny can't imagine anyone being so glad to see Sheldon, especially in the doctor's office where he is no doubt a nightmare, and they're fifteen minutes late anyway—

After looking more closely at the receptionist, Penny realizes that she isn't glad to see Sheldon. She's fucking terrified of him.

Penny snorts. Terrified of Dr. Lemur Man, who'da thunk.

"Do you have my tea?" Sheldon asks, his voice suddenly sniffy.

Whoa.

Someone rushes up with a steaming cup of tea on one of those tiny plates.

WHOA.

It's _these _people that feed his ridiculous sense of entitlement!

Shaking her head, Penny plops down into a chair. "Sheldon, _sit_," she orders.

"But it's my turn," he says, looking confused.

As if on cue a door opens and a doctor appears with a neat clipboard. "Dr. Cooper?"

Sheldon shoots her an "_I told you so_" look and disappears in back, cup of tea in hand.

Penny shakes her head again.

They're doing it _all_ wrong. He doesn't even walk all over Leonard, Howard, and Raj like this.

She crosses her legs and picks up a magazine from last October, leafing through it idly, and ends up dozing off. She is woken up by the loud and unmistakable sound of Sheldon berating someone.

She debates marching in there to intervene and save the poor doctor's ass, but before she makes a decision the door opens and Sheldon walks through it, sitting next to her primly as if nothing is out of the ordinary.

The receptionist disappears like clockwork, and as she opens the door to the back Penny can hear parts of a conversation ("…cut on his finger, we weren't prepared for this…!") before the door shuts again.

"Sheldon what the hell is wrong with you?" she hisses.

"What?" He looks innocently confused, and Penny isn't fooled one bit.

"Stop being such a jackass! Honestly, what would your _mother_ say—"

"You've called my mother once, I won't appreciate if you do it again," he sniffs. "And I am acting perfectly normally!"

"No, you're acting—_more than usual_—like you deserve some sorta _special_ treatment—"

"But I _do_," he replies, as if she is insane for suggesting otherwise.

God. Why does she put up with this.

"I pay this practice _extremely_ generously for being up to my standards, including instant service, pleasantness, a pot of tea, sanitation, quick yet thorough examination of my blood, urine, stool—"

"Okay!" she says, quickly, because once Sheldon starts talking about poop he usually doesn't stop. She stands, getting ready to leave, wondering why Sheldon is endorsing this dawdling. "I'm done, we're done, let's go—" She grabs his wrist and tries to drag him out of his chair.

"But my test results—!"

"_Probably_ won't come in until tomorrow—"

"Dr. Cooper? Your blood work is done."

Penny groans.

Honestly? There's something to be said about making a good buck off of a crazy guy, but _this_ is like they're whoring themselves out. Sheldon has made this doctor's office his collective bitch.

Not gonna lie, it's a little hot, but mostly weird and unnecessary.

Twisting his arm from Penny's grasp (the doctor looks at the two of them oddly), Sheldon stands and gives the doctor his most imperious look.

_Oh give me a fucking break_.

"We've detected an anomaly in your blood—"

"Rabies?!" Sheldon immediately yelps.

"No, not rabies," the doctor says slowly, and looks down at his clipboard, seemingly unsure. "We have to run more tests on it—"

"More tests?!" Sheldon yelps. "Ex_cuse_ me, but I thought we had an agreement—"

"Oh get over it Sheldon!" Penny finally interrupts. "Call him as soon as you can with the results," she tells the doctor firmly, who looks both relieved and surprised that someone else is taking control. "I'll go put him back in his straightjacket, let's go."

"This _disgusting_ lack of service had better be reflected in your bill, sir!" Sheldon shouts over his shoulder as Penny bodily pushes him out the door.

* * *

The next few weeks are increasingly weird. Sheldon cycles between lethargy and extreme annoyance to the point of anger, causing the three boys to constantly search refuge outside of 4A, even resorting to going often to Howard's mother's house for downtime. Penny has her apartment but spends a lot of time shouting Sheldon down, especially since he's convinced that he has a very rare form of rabies that has not yet been discovered.

And, on the evening of the twenty-sixth, Penny finds out that he's sort of right.

After a nine-hour shift, shoving her way through the front door, and carrying three bags of groceries all the way up to the fourth floor, Penny is ready to pretty much collapse face first on the landing.

She hears a noise coming from 4A and looks over, cautiously.

There is a crash.

Oh, _fuck_. Those robbers are back.

Suddenly re-energized like that fucking rabbit in those battery commercials, Penny darts into her apartment, spills all of her groceries in her attempt to reach for her bat under the counter, and without even closing her door tears back toward 4A.

She bangs three times on the door (she figures it's only fair to give them warning, she had like a .329 batting average when she played travel ball), and then practically knocks it off its hinges.

She doesn't see robbers, but what she _does_ see makes her cry out and swing her bat anyway.

* * *

She should have known that a day would come where Sheldon would manage to become a mythological beast (intentionally or no). And if she _had_ known, she would have thought it would be something weird, like a defanged chupacabra or something.

But… this?

At her entrance he was kneeling by the door, hands—claws—dug into his hair—LONG hair, well, long_ish_, for Sheldon, shirt off and muscles writhing and, like, bubbling, and Penny just reacted. And now a large fucking (unconscious) beast is laying in the middle of the living room.

Shit. She hopes Leonard doesn't come home anytime soon. She's been sitting and staring for the better part of the hour and she can't think of anything that could explain the all the lycanthropy that's going down in his apartment.

At first Penny was extremely worried that she had broken probably one of the most important brains of the twenty-first century. She hit him square in the forehead with a _baseball_ bat and he went _instantly_ out cold. But, honestly, then she figured that with as much strength that she put into that swing Normal Sheldon's head should have come _clean_ off. There wasn't even a bruise. Well. Okay, there was, but it was only a tiny one. And it went away when, like, his head transformed.

So, basically, yay, it turns out that Sheldon's skull got a lot thicker.

She's just glad that the unconsciousness transferred over. She still doesn't know what she's gonna do when he wakes up. Or what _he's_ going to do, for that matter. From her research—okay, from reading _Harry Potter_, _normal_ werewolves were all rabid and shit. But, first off, this is like a real life werewolf and not one of those made-up ones. Second off, Sheldon isn't a normal _human being_, there is _no_ guarantee he is going to act anything like a normal werewolf would.

She hogties him just in case. Those knots are fucking _powerful_, if she's allowed to brag.

Around two in the morning, Penny keeping vigil on the armchair with the bat on her knees, he starts to stir.

Penny immediately tenses, and stands up cautiously.

The beast—Sheldon—whatever—struggles a little, appearing confused, and that very quickly and very obviously turns into anger.

Whoacrap.

"HEY," Penny says, loudly, banging the end of the bat on the hardwood for emphasis.

Whatever-she-should-think-of-him-as snaps his head toward her. Raises his jowls.

GOD THIS IS SO DAMN WEIRD. It's not even scary, that's how weird it is.

Okay. This is Sheldon. He was bitten by a _puppy_ for Christ's sake, he can't be that dangerous. And it's not as if human-Sheldon never explodes in anger, it's just more surprising while he's, like, in mythological form. Or something.

She feels insane just for thinking this.

"Okay, listen up," she says loudly and firmly, talking like she would talk to an uncooperative dog. Which she supposes is sort of what Sheldon is right now. His ears twitch. "You're gonna calm the hell down. Don't bother to struggle; I got a blue ribbon in junior rodeo doing this from _horseback_. If you manage to get loose I'm hitting you with the bat again. But I'm not letting you up until you're… human again because I have no idea whether or not I might as well be talking to the, the _refrigerator_ for all you can understand."

He doesn't seem to happy about this. Or happy at all. But mostly about this.

Ignoring the sudden ruckus he starts making, Penny sighs and lets herself back down on the armchair. This is going to be a long night.

* * *

"Penny. Penny. … _Penny_!"

Penny awakes.

She stands up, clumsy with drowsiness. The bat rolls off her knees and with a _bang_ lands against the coffee table.

Squinting out the window, she guesses it is just past dawn.

Ughhh. Someone's getting punched in the throat.

And then she actually remembers everything.

"Sheldon?"

Tripping a little over her own feet she cautiously peers around the coffee table to where she left Sheldon the night before, and once she sees him she feels really awkward.

And then she closes her eyes.

Fuuuuck. Sheldon's naked. This is not normal.

She gropes around on the armchair for the knitted throw blanket she used last night and throws it in Sheldon's general direction, hoping that it lands in his… general area.

"Good? And… covered? And stuff?"

"Yes."

His voice is hoarse. It sort of goes in line with the image of him in her brain right about now.

She opens her eyes, feels them bug a little, and then averts them.

"So, um…"

"Penny, I'm still tied."

"Oh!"

She quickly makes her way over to him, and after a hesitation lifts one corner of the blanket off of his ankles so she can take the rope off.

Penny glances up at him. He is watching her. His hair is still longish. And his muscles… just… she noticed he was bulking up a little—a lot—this past month, but she was so pissed off with him most of the time that she never really paid attention to it. And she thought it was just him working off energy, or taking super steroids, or _something_. Anything made more sense than this.

Made. Makes. Who knows anymore.

This is so awkward. She should have instantly asked 'WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT,' but, it's just, she can't. It's strange.

She moves to his wrists. They're on top of his chest, like he's praying. Penny bends over him and almost tentatively starts to undo them, becoming a little more un-tentative when the knots prove stubborn.

"Alright, Sheldon, this is going to be, um, _more_ awkward, so just bear with me."

And she straddles his waist.

"What are you—?!"

Penny pulls at the knots, bracing with her knees, and they come out, the rope dangling from her fingers. Sheldon's hands hover several inches above his chest like he's not sure what to do with them.

They stare at each other.

Then the door opens.

It's Leonard, sneaking back home.

Fuck.

"This definitely isn't what it looks like," Penny says when Leonard freezes, staring at her and Sheldon on the floor.

"Yeah… I'm going to go throw up anyway."

* * *

Penny is waiting in Sheldon's room when he gets out of the shower, securely covered in his robe.

"You could have untied me sooner. I have marks on my wrists and ankles," he complains, by way of greeting.

_And a bruise on your forehead_, she adds mentally.

"Yeah? How was I supposed to know you wouldn't, like, maul me?" she shoots, feeling comforted. This is arguing. This is familiar. What _isn't_ familiar, however, is a very R-rated image the word 'maul' generated in her stupid, stupid brain.

"Morse code, Penny! Morse code! I was knocking my head on the floor, asking you to—"

"What _ever_ gave you the impression I know Morse code?!"

"Well, I suggested that you learn it long ago, and _usually_ my suggestions are taken into account—"

"Yeah, that never happened."

"April the twenty-third!" he proclaims, "after dinner, we—"

"Okay! Whatever!" This is so stupid. "Alright, are we going to discuss, like, what _happened_? Because this is _weird_ weird. Like, weirder than the time you wore jeans."

"I _tried_ to warn you, but as usual you brushed aside my analyses that I was suffering from a very rare and undiscovered disease that is aggravated at full moon—"

"You _never_ said full moon."

"Yes. Well. I didn't notice… _that_ particular correlation until last night."

"How helpful."

There is a pause. They avoid each other's gaze.

"So were you able to… like… think?"

"…I was lucid. Moreso after you went to sleep."

"And you didn't want to—" She tries to find a politically correct way of saying 'try to eat me.'

But Sheldon seems to get it. "There was an impulse in the beginning, yes, but I quickly controlled that." He plays with the cord of his robe.

"Do you think that that's normal?"

Sheldon looks at her.

"_Comparatively_ normal," she corrects herself.

"How will I know? There is no control group. As I am already a super-specimen logic follows that I am also so as a—" He clears his throat, and avoids the word. Then he seems to realize something. "Hey… _you're_ average. Relatively. Perhaps if next month I—"

"Sheldon, I'm gonna hit you with the bat again if you finish that sentence."

* * *

"I don't know where my life is that it's my job to handle this," Penny says the next month, trusty bat in her grip, as a large gigantic huge beast blinks at her. It twitches a little, and sits.

Penny grins, a wicked thought coming to her.

She whistles.

The werewolf instantly growls and whines at the same time.

"What's that, Lassie?" Penny asks, "Negative strike? Now I only have one?"

She whistles again.

"Oh, look at that, now I don't have any!"

At this point he stands, threatening, almost stalking.

"None of that," Penny warns, holding the bat warningly. "Or you get the bat. I'm not risking you wanting to have your little control group again.

He looks pretty consternated at this. Penny laughs at him. Oh, this is great fun.

Standing, cautiously, feeling his eyes follow her as she makes her way around her apartment to the door, she checks to make sure it's locked and barricaded and if she falls asleep there's no way he would be able to figure out how to open it. The last thing she needs is to go clucking her tongue after a stray werewolf; what a mess that would be.

_Poor Leonard_, she thinks absently. If he thought they were having sex before, he certainly thinks so now. It didn't help when, earlier that night, Penny announced to the living room: _"Alright, Sheldon, you're coming to my apartment tonight and I'm not letting you out till morning,"_ especially in wake of his new… um, build.

No one believed her when she said it wasn't what they thought.

And for a moment, when she heard Sheldon undressing in her bathroom in preparation, she didn't really believe herself either.

She falls asleep on her couch for a few minutes, and wakes up to Sheldon chewing on the cushion next to her thigh.

Gosh. This sort of blows.

* * *

"Penny. Penny. Penny."

Better than an alarm clock, that man.

Penny cracks an eye open and sees him standing over her, dressed and quiet.

She blinks. The blurriness clears.

Yawning, she sits up, and falls with a squeak into the hole Sheldon had created in her couch cushion.

He has the good grace to look embarrassed. "I… apologize about the couch. I'll replace it."

"Well, it's better than, you know, if you had chewed my foot or something." She stands, a little wobbly, and inspects the damage for a moment before shrugging. "Don't worry. If I turn it over I'm sure no one'll notice."

"Penny, I don't believe—"

Penny starts to push the entertainment center from where it was leaning against her door. Sheldon cuts himself off like a champ and starts to help her. Again—like most of her life recently—it's weird.

Not speaking, she unlocks her door and walks him to his, trying to feel natural.

"Penny," he says, and they stop in front of 4A.

"Yeah?"

He pauses. "Thank you for… staying with me."

It's so sweet that it makes her embarrassed.

"It's okay," she tries to brush it off. "I mean, I was the one that made you pet the puppy. It's kinda my fault. A little."

There is another lull, and to fill it, she gives him a quick hug. He's very warm.

Somehow, she's not sure how, one of them ends up kissing the other. The other one—whoever didn't initiate it, and she can't for the life of her figure out who that is—responds immediately.

Penny ends up against the door, both of them hungrily, ravenously pressed into each other, and days or months or something like it pass when she unexpectedly falls backwards. Sheldon, very ungracefully, mostly knees and elbows (despite everything) and with a surprised squawk, lands on top of her.

She could have predicted it, but she looks up and sees Leonard, peering sleepily and shocked down at them.

"This—" she starts, then thinks. "Okay, this is exactly what it looks like," she admits.

**THE END. I KNOW, FINALLY.**


End file.
